Roli Seaboard Grand up for pre-order, bendable music starts at $2,000

We were pretty impressed with what Roli showed off at SXSW back in March, and now the company's rubberized keyboard is up for pre-order. The instrument is built in a standard piano configuration, with a soft surface that allows you to directly bend pitch and add vibrato and other effects to the notes as you're playing them -- sort of like bending guitar strings. The Seaboard Grand comes in three price configurations that hit a pretty wide spread, starting at $2,000 for the 37-key Grand Studio, all the way up to $8,888.88 for the massive 88 key Grand Limited First Edition. Only 88 of the latter will actually be sold -- a vaguely superstitious pricing scheme, it seems. That one will be shipping in December of this year. The others will start arriving in fall of next year.